From Geostandards

Example

Situation

We examine the fictitious organisation "IngClub", an organisation that is large enough to have its own ICT department. The ICT Department is just large enough to keep its existing ICT infrastructure running.

IngClub has an SIP (Spatial Information Provision) Department. This department oversees the results of analyses and datasets for other internal departments and for external providers, such as municipalities, provinces or water boards. The analyses are related to the spatial aspects of the data.

The SIP receives its input from various resources within and outside IngClub. Examples of external providers are the Land Registry, the Directorate General of Public Works and Water Management, the Central Bureau of Statistics, aerial photographers and other producers of data.

Problem

During the meeting of the Head of Departments (the MT) the number of complaints about SIP has been increasing recently. This has occurred most frequently after use of the basis registrations (such as Top10NL) and the use of these is now mandatory. It is taking longer and longer for the SIP to finish its jobs. Deadlines are being missed. The number of failures is increasing and recently even the specific results of analyses could no longer be provided.

Analysis

The Head of the Department screens the most important working processes that his department does and feeds back the causes during an MT. According to him, the problems are being caused by external influences and events which have increased work pressure throughout the department.

On the one hand, requests for SIP products have increased, on the other hand, more subjects that have to be fine-tuned with each other are now involved. So there is an increasing volume of work and, at the same time, an increasing level of complexity.

Apart from this, SIP has other tasks to do. It has to make sure that the process quality is certified, it has to couple activities more precisely to income and costs, and it has to try to execute the content-related work with a growing arsenal of commercial and SIP specific software. Some of those products are seriously out of date, but innovation is too expensive. Another reason against making innovations is that without this antique software and its own database, the exchange of files with other departments would become problematic. At the same time, new software packages have been introduced because the department needs to be able to work with external datasets and meet the desires of external clients. So apart from the increase in the number and level of the quality requirements, the tools have started to become a problem: the instrumentation fragments.

Diagnosis

Finally the head of the SIP department summarises this diagnosis:

• SIP does not have enough knowledge to perform its task;
• The SIP information systems do not (sufficiently) connect with each other, and they do not link (sufficiently) with information systems within IngClub;
• SIP does not have enough financial means;
• SIP does not have enough manpower.

He tells his fellow MT colleagues that these problems are partly caused by the increasing need for collaboration between all the departments in the organisation. The nature of the current ICT infrastructure is also influential. He concludes with an appeal that they should not regard this as a problem just for the SIP department, but as a problem facing the entire IngClub organisation. "When we try to find a solution that helps all of us in the long run, it will be cheaper for our organisation," he states.

Problem signalling

Failure Factors

Details Problem signalling

Requirements Problem signalling

• Problems signalled have to be caused by the way systems are organised combined with the available ICT environment;

• Problems signalled have to have the tendency to increase in the near future when known modifications come into force.

Problems at Directorate General for Public Works and Water Management in 2003:

• The diversity of present web/gis software;

• Duplication of geo-information in various applications, without interoperability;

• Applications that overlap each other in functionality by 70-80%;

• Not always enough support and management;

• Lack of knowledge and time to make new software to support applications;

• Constraint on budgets.

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